The Boys Are Back

by Simon Carr

  Everyone grieves differently. For weeks Alexander compartmentalised his emotions in a way that you hear is particularly male. He would play happily much of the time and affectionately talk about his mother in heaven. But then, every day in those first weeks, he would collapse into a sort of coma of his own. He’d sink to the floor in slow motion and lie there, not crying, eyes open, registering nothing. After an hour in this state he’d abruptly come to and continue with his day. The appearance of grief was unpredictable. ‘I want to die!’ he’d say quite cheerfully, ‘so I can be with Mummy. But don’t worry, Daddy, I’ll stay down here with you for now.’

  And this theme emerged capriciously and then disappeared for weeks. There was a subterranean theme running under his daily life. It surfaced, it sank, it broke surface, it sank away. For weeks he wouldn’t respond to stories, questions or conversation about her and then suddenly he might say, as he did in a supermarket, ‘Do you think Mummy’s eating her lollies yet?’ (His grandmother had told him that heaven was where you can have anything you want.) It shows how little we know what goes on in their minds. Between the detergents and cereals he was tracking his mother’s progress through the next world.

  Once, at a dinner party, he woke up on the sofa and joined the party, bringing messages on pieces of pig-shaped paper to one of the guests, to Hugo’s Aunt Francie, as it happened. ‘Thank you, Alexander,’ she said, as she took in the shape of the paper. ‘You’ve obviously got a good eye for character’ and then she read the messages. ‘Dear Mam, it is vere sad’ and ‘Dear Mummy, I will miss you.’ And, ‘Dere Mam, evre bode wos krig [crying] and I mis you.’ And finally, ‘Dear Mam, I hop you lie [like] pancas [pancakes] laf [love] Alexander.’

  Francie, as New Zealand women do, prides herself on her practical nature. She said firmly in her no-nonsense voice: ‘We’ll burn them when we get home and the smoke will go up to Mummy in heaven, and she’ll be able to read them all.’

  Later there were other tender expressions of his feelings. When he was ten we were playing shapes-in-the-clouds and he said: ‘That looks like a car. Do you think the angels use clouds for driving across the sky? Daddy, can we get a convertible? Or a car with a sunroof, so that Mummy can come down and drop messages into the car for me?’

  We all reacted in different ways to this death, after the excitement had died down. Some say that every moment saved from death is worth it; others greet it as the end of pain and the beginning of another life. Still others experience relief without admitting to it, perhaps because they daren’t or perhaps because they just don’t recognise it as relief. It isn’t always clear what is happening to you. Friends told me of their neighbours who nursed their dying child for eighteen months. They were courageous and loving; the disaster unfolded so gradually they didn’t notice how heavy was the burden they were carrying. When the end came, the three brothers and sisters all put on a simultaneous growth spurt and for the first time in a year the youngest started to smile.

  Like Alexander, my own reaction came in convulsions. Driving down a country road, absently listening to a song on the radio, I heard the words: ‘High up above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was dying.’ It was that Paul Simon song. And then it went, ‘My soul rose unexpectedly, and looking back down at me smiled reassuringly …’ And that triggered a crying jag so intense that I had to stop the car for fear my head would burst. People say life goes on. And to some extent, people are right.

  Part two

  The experiment begins

  There are very few all-male households around. There are no rules, no precedents. Being statistically insignificant, Alexander and I had no role models, we had no peer pressure. But we were male. That was one thing in our favour. At least we were male so we could do anything we wanted.

  The experiment began in a very definite way five years ago in an empty house at the beginning of spring. The funeral was over. The mourners had gone home. For the first time, Alexander and I found ourselves alone in the big house with the french doors and the hatch so that men could have their tea without coming inside.

  What was I? Forty-two. I’d been working in the capital most of the week for the last year and coming home for long weekends. My little Beedle Bop had grown to be five quite suddenly. Neither of us was entirely sure who the other was. He had attached himself to the image of me, the vision of me coming home after a week in the city, bringing him presents.

  Dealing with the emotions that our situation was producing was new and not easy for someone with my untutored heart. I had never taken a proper interest in how these things function and had delegated the work to Susie; she was a great entrepreneur in the way people felt. She had a talent for sympathy, she could draw people’s feelings to the surface; she had a quickness of heart which allowed her to read their feelings. It was where she was most literate, articulate and intuitive.

  So it was obvious I couldn’t attempt her way of doing things. I was uncertain of myself, of him, of my abilities as a parent and even whether we’d be allowed to stay together (can’t the state intervene and make sure a woman looks after little children?). My son and I were intimate strangers. We had to get to know each other quickly. We needed a crash course in each other.

  So, rather than sit down for a week and engage the situation directly, rather than talk through carefully and thoroughly what had happened – how sick Susie had been and why she’d decoupled from him, and why there was such a vortex of grief and anger around us, and why people were thinking about suing the hospice for the death of his mother – we did something more practical. That’s a word New Zealand women like above every other. We became ‘practical’. We loaded up the car with everything necessary for a week away. This turned out to be two wetsuits, T-shirts, underwear, a case of wine, two trays of beer, a variety of meat and a pedal car belted into the passenger seat. And then we went on a five hundred-mile drive around the country.

  They say running away is never the answer but then they also say heavy drinking is never an answer. Running away can be a perfectly good answer to a certain sort of question. The most pressing thing I needed to know was how Alexander and I were going to talk to each other.

  Up until that period we’d never had proper conversations. I never said to him: ‘If you jumped really high on a dark night do you think you could reach the moon?’ Or, ‘When you go into space without a space suit did you know your brain comes out of your nose and you explode?’ Or, ‘Look at that girl, don’t you think she’s got a face like someone’s bum.’

  No, hitherto my conversation had fallen into three equally unsatisfactory categories. The first issued all those maddening chicken-or-fish questions: ‘Do you want any more apricot wheaties? Where are your shoes? What do you want me to read tonight? Have you done your homework? Is it sports tomorrow? Do you want me to check your bag and make sure you’ve got your trainers in there?’ Negotiators use these sorts of questions on hostage takers, to puncture their reverie of omnipotence. It is very successful at doing that.

  The second was the sort of IQ-test question that probed for signs of intelligence: ‘Have you noticed that they use the same actor’s voice for Captain Hook as for Mr Darling? Why do you think they do that?’ That’s not exactly a collegial way of talking to your little mate. That’s not a conversation, it’s a tutorial and it doesn’t count.

  And the third was the blocking technique that serotonin-rich parents use to block their boys’ rhythm. I had been aware for many years how naturally we fall into a negative way of talking to boys – more so than to girls. Boys are risky creatures, so those who care for them are continually saying: ‘Don’t run on the wet tiles; don’t hold the knife by the blade; don’t throw the balls at the windows; don’t slide down the bannisters; be careful of the swing; put on warmer clothes; don’t wave that stick around, you’ll put someone’s eye out with that stick!’

  In our new state I had to find a way of being together, of talking to him. And a way of
comforting him, if he needed it. And of making him do what was necessary. We had to become a father-and-son thing. He had to get some manners so he’d be welcome in other people’s houses. He couldn’t grow up wild or he’d never have friends.

  These were lessons he had to learn – very important lessons that had to be instilled.

  I really wasn’t expecting the sort of reverse takeover that happened so quickly.

  I’ve been married more than once and it’s been a shock, frankly. There were suddenly many things that were forbidden and another range of things which became compulsory.

  The lessons my wives were at pains to teach changed how I behaved, but my sons’ lessons changed how I felt. Their education has been particularly male. They never urged me into better ways, never criticised, never dissected and reconstructed. And as a result, their method turned out to be more effective. When their situation became intolerable to them they silently removed themselves and let the resulting pain do its work. In this way you reorganise yourself and the retooling is permanent. In the beginning Alexander was in no position to remove himself but he was able to disappear by way of sulking (like drinking, it’s the easiest form of travel).

  The tutorials started almost at once.

  Looking through my diaries of the time, my manner was very unlike what it became. I was acting in a way that I assumed I ought to act. From observation it was clear that one layer of behaviour provided care, comfort, love, warmth and inspirational cooking. That would all be new and difficult: no experience, no real aptitude. Then, it seemed, another layer of behaviour was required which was demanding, invasive and authoritarian. The combination of these behaviour clusters appeared to be how boys were brought up. In my hands, through the early days, it veered unsuccessfully between peremptory demands and abject capitulation.

  On the first day of our trip we’d had a slow start, we’d had a tour round a number of friends and this had taken its toll. None of them had had the right sort of orange juice. This was very important. He needed to be set up for the big trip with the right sort of juice. He wouldn’t have the mix-it-yourself, he wouldn’t have the freshly squeezed carton. He wouldn’t have the made-from-concentrate carton. He wouldn’t have the Ribena tetrabrick. He had been increasingly silent as these visits took their toll on his reserves of tolerance. There’s only so much of this you can take, as any parent knows.

  On our way down a suburban street heading for Wellington, he went dangerously quiet. His mother would never have allowed this. I decided I must put a stop to it. ‘Do you want a drink, Alexander?’ I asked. He knew that I knew the answer to that so he went into a subtly deeper silence. ‘Do you want a drink?’ I repeated. ‘Do you? Alexander? Do you or do you not want a drink?’ To answer this question was to put himself in my power; he understood this very clearly as we approached a junction. I said, ‘All right, Alexander. Wellington is that way’ – and I pointed – ‘and the drink shop is this way. Which way do you want to go? That way or this way?’

  He sat there. He wouldn’t say. The silence in the car became perceptibly more claustrophobic. I nastily started turning to Wellington and immediately things got worse, much worse. He went into action stations, he was about to dive deep. Even I could see how bad things had suddenly got, so I panicked. I began to make amends. I took the edge off my voice, became amiable, sycophantically amiable. Of course, he could see what I was doing – it was as if I had a kick-me sign up, only an amateur would fall for these clumsy overtures.

  ‘Okay, on consideration, I believe it would be best to go to the drink shop. Will you come in and help me choose, Beedle Bop? So I can be sure of getting the right drink for you?’

  Cleverly, he refused. Without firm instructions I was very much more rattled. So I went in and tried to cover all the options. I bought a tetrabrick of orange that he definitely liked, but also a litre pack of the same brand to prevent him accusing me of meanness. Then, in case he wanted something else, I got another can of a different fizzy drink – the same can that was rolling around in the passenger well, a screwtop Crowd Pleaser bottle, some chocolate fingers, gingerbread kisses and two bags of crisps in different flavours. The bases were loaded. There was nothing else in the shop that could have added to my sense of security.

  He received the bulging bag with reserved disappointment and no thanks. He waited to play his hand and, because he is a subtle and intuitive tactician, he avoided an immediate appraisal of the bag. There was a skirmish about the route first: ‘That’s the way to Wellington!’ he cried as I drove in the other direction.

  ‘Ah yes, technically that’s right, but this way is another way to Wellington that saves us turning round. We turn left here and it doubles back, and we get on the Wellington road.’

  ‘You said that was the way to Wellington! We’re going this way.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s here, see, it’s just here we turn, look, where the sign says Wellington, we’re on the road to Wellington.’

  ‘You said THAT was the way,’ he cried and made ready to dive to where I couldn’t reach him. He sat there on his depth charge, letting it tick, preparing to jump ship and ride it down as far as these things can go. I sulkily drove through the most beautiful countryside in the world and then he decided to go. He reached for the drinks bag. He opened it slowly, sullenly, brilliantly, actually. Then he was away. ‘I don’t want orange juice!’ he wailed and his grief was enormous.

  ‘Well, I can’t help that,’ I said desperately. ‘You wouldn’t come in and choose, I did what I could, I thought you wanted orange juice, you always have orange juice! I didn’t know which orange juice you wanted so I got them all. But they’re all orange juice. And look! Crisps! Mm! You’re hungry. You’re tired. Eat the chocolate.’

  But he’d gone into a very different space, suddenly. One of his wails faded out at its peak and he was gasping, staring, almost silent.

  Of course, it’s impossible to say how much of this is low blood sugar, generalised naughtiness, or suppressed grief at the death of the only woman who would love him like a mother. All single parents have to deal with this equation, if in less extreme form. But this was so different from his normal lamentation that I pulled over and stopped the car. I picked him out of the front; he was making faint whimpering noises now, as though he was in shock – the sort of traffic-accident shock that doctors use adrenalin shots for. I laid him in the back with a blanket over him.

  There was no solution to this problem – things were never going to be all right. I was trying to reach back into the resources to find something comforting to say but there was nothing there; the cupboard was bare. So I wandered around the car, watching the hedgerows, waited by the side of the road. Trucks swept past. Everyone was going somewhere else.

  Reasoning that boys, first and foremost, do what they want, I left him where he was and went through a dialogue with his mother.

  She said: Tick him up. Give him a cuddle.’

  I said: ‘Why do you think he wants that?’

  ‘Because he’s crying. Comfort him.’

  ‘He’s inconsolable. When he wants me to comfort him he comes to me. When he hurts himself he comes to me and I cuddle him until he’s better. But this is different.’

  ‘How can you leave him crying?’

  ‘I’ve put a blanket over him. I’m watching him for when he comes round. It’s like he’s having a fit. There’s no point in cuddling epileptics, is there?’

  ‘You’re vile.’

  ‘True. But not on this occasion. He’s missing you.’

  ‘He is making a meal of it. Whack his bottom.’

  ‘He’ll be all right. He’ll come round. Then he’ll suddenly stop crying and he might yawn deeply and fall asleep, or sometimes he starts chatting. It’s impossible to guess which.’

  ‘I couldn’t leave him like that.’

  ‘I know, darling. You’d either cuddle him up, or whack him, or drag him to his room and shut the door on him. I’m inclined just to leave him to it. It’s one of
those times when the less you do the better. Great athletes are like this, they do as little as possible, to conserve their strength.’

  ‘That’s probably the only thing you have in common with great athletes.’

  ‘Don’t you get athletes with stomachs like mine?’

  ‘Athletes don’t have stomachs at all.’

  ‘Darts players do. Ten-pin bowlers do.’

  This phantom conversation was the only time I managed to come out on top, so I stopped it there.

  And by the end of the conversation Alexander had abruptly surfaced. He hadn’t fallen asleep. He drank his orange juice, ate the strawberry-flavoured muesli bar that had somehow found its way into the bag and began a string of astonishingly boring questions to find out what was bigger than our house (Australia, Wellington, a shark, the moon, a sheep, a desert). And so we proceeded cheerfully to the city.

  But our operating conditions hadn’t changed. There was his mysterious, unfathomable grief and there was my testiness.

  There’s only so much I can do for children before I get testy. This is a self-limiting factor on treats. Past a certain point of generosity my spirits give out and the brain blows up. For instance, he said, ‘My school bag’s dirty, we’ll have to buy another one, after we’ve bought new shoes.’ And that, combined with three trips up and down the cable car (it isn’t fun, whatever it sounds like) and demands to travel up every escalator we saw, drove me to a sticking point. It was the second lot of new shoes he wanted that did it. No, I told him, we couldn’t. Why not? We were going to see the exhibition of the Queen’s pictures. Nothing could be more boring than that, so it expressed my needs very economically.